May I just point out that Uranus is not a black hole, but merely a planet.

Yes, as someone who's used Linux for almost two decades I sit here and smile at how the masochistic Windows users are squirming :-)

I need to buy some commodity item. A cable. A weird light bulb. Replacement air filters for the furnace. The workflow is simple:

1. Look the item up on Google, check prices at the local places (Home Depot, Target, Micro Center, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc...)
2. Look the item up on Amazon.

If I must have it immediately, I buy it locally.
If it's a lot cheaper on Amazon and I don't need it right away, I buy it on Amazon.
If Amazon isn't that much cheaper than buying local, I'll buy local.

It's not hard. It takes about two minutes to research this stuff. Shopping around used to involve calling or driving to multiple stores. Now I can do it from my couch.

I'm not sure what's getting worse here.

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing a device powered by Android(TM). Please note that in order to use the device you have BOUGHT AND PAID FOR to run the apps YOU HAVE WRITTEN you will have to supply a government-issued ID, proof of address and a payment of US$25.

Note, the permissions then granted may be revoked at any time for any reason and those reasons may not be disclosed.

Any appeals to such revocation will be handled by our AI chatbot but, in order to save time, we have predetermined the outcome: Appeal DENIED.

Welcome to the Google ecosystem where you are the product and our sole purpose is to collect your money and your personal information.

Regards
Google (a division of Alphabet)
On behalf of our army of advertisers.

Reading books has been largely de-emphasized in schools. My son is a senior and has only had two full books assigned as reading. No summer reading. Most reading assignments involve "texts," like news articles, blog posts, social media posts, and short stories. Fortunately, he likes reading and reads quite a bit independently. His classmates, if not doing the same, are going to run into problems when going to college.

The FAA has not yet finished working on part 108 (flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)) of its regulations for drones. This means that right now all drone operations must be done within visual line of sight of the operator or by a special waiver. One of the conditions of part 108 is that drones must have a "detect and avoid" capability that would prevent this sort of incident from happening -- so how did it happen?

If the drone was being flown by visual line of sight then the operator should have seen something as big as a crane.

If it was being flown under a waiver and the FAA has already mandated "detect and avoid" as a requirement for BVLOS then someone wasn't complying with the terms of the waiver.

And all for what -- so your tube-socks will arrive 15 minutes faster?

I have been a part of the drone community and industry for more than 15 years and I can tell you that B2C drone deliveries, outside of a few specific cases, will never become practical. The likes of Amazon and Google are far more interested in the data they can scoop up by flying drones over urban/residential areas than they are in actually delivering stuff. They also both realize that the *real* money will be made from creating a UTM (unmanned traffic management) system which is like ATC for drones. Both these companies are very much into infrastructure provision and the UTM that will be needed for large-scale drone operations is the perfect target for their expansion.

Don't be fooled, "drone delivery" is just a diversion while they prepare their UTM plans and claim that "we have more experience than anyone in drone traffic management". Despite that experience, Amazon has a record of setting stuff on fire and crashing into cranes while Google's Wing craft have been known to black out wide areas after performing "precautionary landings" on high-voltage power lines.

If a kid can't fly their 250g drone in a park without all sorts of tests and a digital angle-bracelet in the form of "Remote ID" then clearly this tech is way to dangerous to have giant delivery drones laden with god-knows-what falling from the skies across our cityscape.

I saw that movie. The PR lady falls in love with the robot that looks like John Malkovich. I'm not sure what's wrong with that.

Even good audiophool speaker cables cost more than this -- but you can't really put a price on silver-plated cryogenically treated 101% pure copper wires that have been braided by the hands of virgins under a blue moon whist facing directly East into a 5 knot wind at 37.5 percent humidity precisely located over a suitable warp in the magnetic field of the earth.

And yes, you can definitely hear the difference, especially when using 128kbps MP3 files!

Not the smartphones per se. But the fact that they tend to keep you indoors away from the Vitamin D our bodies critically need. Find 'Medcram' on YouTube for a medical perspective about this vitamin. No, pills will not work as good.

And while we're talking about things no one is allowed to talk about, let's bring up a certain under-tested mandated medicine at one time for everyone also? If you care, Dr. Campbell on YouTube is a good resource for that.

For the new piles of ewaste they're generating. It's kind of funny how Google gets hauled into court for all their anti-trust hijinks but yet to fail to see Amazon on the radar!

Know what makes people age fast and causes cancer? Smoking. Know what 14% of millennials do? Vape.

Copyright on Youtube is hopelessly broken. A couple of legal channels I watch have had their content copied wholesale into new channels, with new AI generated intros and outros. The lawyers, some of whom specialize in IP law, and some of whom have some fairly large channels, had tremendous difficulties getting the cloned channels taken down. Subscribed viewers said that the clone channels were being recommended over their own channels by Youtube. It's a mess.

I'd agree with you 100% if these people were criticizing Klein. For the videos he is suing for, they were not. They were sniping his stream. Meaning, they were rebroadcasting his stream with no commentary or communication of any kind, so they would get the views instead of him. I've seen the videos of the people he is suing. They said, basically, "Here's his stream! This guy is an idiot." And that was the extent of the criticism. Some walked away from the camera and ate dinner while rebroadcasting his stream.

The mods he is suing were organizing and promoting the snipe streams. They also didn't offer criticism beyond "Let's snipe Ethan he's a jerk."

I don't like anybody involved here. I'm not a fan of Ethan Klein either. But the people who make nothing new and snipe content are bottom feeders and need to be kicked off the internet. I'm fine with criticism and commentary channels. The sniping, though, needs to stop.

The point isn't that Saudia runs 380-800s. The point is the royal family has the money to buy anything they want. Planes, apartment buildings, yachts, skyscrapers, cities, airlines, football clubs, hotels, restaurants, software companies, etc... If they wanted an Airbus 380-800, they'd buy it. To that point Riyadh air, also owned by PIF, is planning on buying a few dozen Boeing Dreamliners.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. The royal family are the nation. We only vaguely know how much money they have because they don't need to report it, as they are not taxed. They get *all* revenue from state-owned enterprises then distribute money to the government as they see fit. They keep their money in banks that they own governed by laws that they make.

Brunei has the same situation. The sultan was traditionally the richest man in the world.